The Sport of Kings (34 page)

“Amen!”

“'Cause ain't no school ever taught me right from wrong.”

“No…”

“Bring me the truth in the words of my father and his father.”

“Amen.”

“And the Holy Father, Amen.”

“Amen.”

“All right!” the Reverend cried suddenly, sharply, and raised his head with a ferocious gaze. But immediately the severity of his face eased as if he was about to make a joke, and his voice was dangerous, slippery when he said, “So … how many y'all sinned this week?” Behind that half smile, there was the hardness of carbon that his humor broke itself upon. There was only silence in reply, sudden and heavy. The quick enthusiasm he'd drawn banked.

“Ha!” he cried out into the surprised silence. “Wasn't expecting that, huh? Thought I was gonna warm y'all up, say something pretty about how Jesus is watching out for you and all that. But, oh, Jesus is mad—can't you hear him storming up there in heaven? That's the sound of Jesus in the temple, just mad as can be.” He held a hand to his ear and cocked his head. “Now, I asked how many y'all sinned?”

He raised his own hand, peering at the people turned out in their Sunday best, ironed and perfumed, fake-pearled, lipsticked, hair straightened and curled and oiled. “Ain't nobody sinned? Well,” he said with his arms stretched wide, “it's a miracle.”

Then a low voice said, “Reverend, I sinned.”

“Who—what? Who sinned?”

A man stood quietly in the midst of the congregation. He wore a western shirt washed thin as parchment, his stained wifebeater showing through. Some of the women in the front rows turned right around in their seats to stare at the man with eyes wide. He locked eyes with the Reverend and passed a nervous hand up and down over the pearled buttons of the shirt. He said again, with gravity, “I sinned.”

“Well, did you like it?” asked the Reverend.

“Uh…” The man's eyes slid corner to corner.

“'Cause if you ain't liked it, then it wasn't sin!”

The room broke up and the man said, “Aw,” like a scolded child, and then, with a grin that turned his somber face brilliant, he said, “I liked what I can remember!”

“Ha! That's sin! That's sin! If you sin, sin like you mean it! Sin bold!” The Reverend pointed a finger straight at the man's chest, the man who was seating himself again, and he began to pace excitedly side to side directly in front of the first row of chairs, in front of the old watchdogs in the amen corner who murmured and nodded. Now the sermon was really beginning, now the Reverend was shedding the weight of his person, his voice rising, his face illuminated by a light from within and without. He looked simultaneously fierce and overwhelmed with joy. He said, “That there is a child of God! A true child of God! If you love Jesus, then you own up. You say, ‘I'm a dirty old sinner!' Now, I hear you all laughing, but who else sinned? Huh? Tell me. Who else sinned?”

He turned on them and the room fell quiet and Allmon yawned and leaned across his chair into the warm side of his mother. He felt the first blurring of sleep coming on the steady waves of her breath. Fatigue and morning heat lulled him. Marie stared unblinking at her father.

“Mmmmm, it got so quiet in here all a sudden.” The Reverend laughed a grim laugh.

No one stirred.

“Ain't nobody gonna speak up? Oh, I see, I see. Y'all are just mad at me. I can hear you now,” he said, and shifted onto his hip suddenly, wagging a finger, and in a creaky little voice: “Aw, now, Reverend, you always be so
hard
on us. Your Jesus ain't
no fun
.” He straightened up. “Well, that's right—Jesus wasn't no fun. His disciples was ignorant and couldn't make no sense of what he was saying, and the people was even more ignorant, and sometimes he got mad like a snapping dog and stormed through the temple, laying it down, and then, you know what? They assassinated him. They strung him up. So, that's right. Jesus wasn't no fun. What part the cross don't you understand?”

Allmon's jaw loosened, then he slipped into sleep.

“No, wait, wait, now I know why ain't nobody fessing up,” said the Reverend. “I know what y'all are thinking: We're so tired of all this sin talk, all the struggle stories. Isn't it time for Easy Street? After all, we ain't the generation that got dragged over from Africa. No, we ain't the generation that slaved and slaved for the white man. We ain't the generation that creeped up under cover of night from Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, when they was still sending your sorry behind back on the L&N with a note said ‘Property Of,' that generation like my great-great-grandfather's who swum across that muddy river”—he pointed behind him at the claybank wall, that muddy yellow space an intimation of the river beyond—“and once he done established himself and got himself a family, hung himself in a white man's attic from a rafter he done raised with his own two hands! Now you think that man—that Scipio—when he was swinging from the rafters, he was busy paying your all's bill? Well, now you say, things are so different now. They're all so different now. The last century paid the bill. Or maybe y'all think the cotton pickers paid the bill? That come up to Chicago, Detroit, to Toledo, right here to Cincinnati? Like how I come up with my own dearly departed folks from the little town of Shelburne, Arkansas? Brothers and sisters,” he said with his hands on his hips, his eyes carefully surveying their faces, “did the good Reverend pay your bill with his own hard life? Was my generation paying the bill when we was young men marching in the streets of this fair city and Selma and Birmingham and the capital of this nation? When the dogs was biting and the hoses was baptizing, when the streets of this country was running with black blood? Let me ask you: Was the Reverend King paying the bill on your all's life when he got shot down on that day in April? Maybe y'all think 1968 was busy paying the bill. I got to admit, that's a awful nice way to think. The bill paid by your forefathers, paid by slaves.”

Now he stopped and turned forward, wily eyes on the congregants. Very quietly, almost shyly, he said, “Oh, Lord Jesus.” Then louder, with his eyes cast up, “Oh Jesus, forgive all the little children. They try to love you, Jesus, they do, but they're so ignorant! Just like in Bible times, so it is today.”

Now he strutted and mocked: “Ah, no, Reverend! We just think the times, they changed! It's 1984. We ain't Negroes no more, we're Afro-Americans. We vote, we got white friends that invite us over, nobody calls us names to our face no more, some of us is vice presidents of the company, some of us even lay down with white men.” He stumbled here, his voice stuttering. Marie glanced wearily down at the floor.

“Well, good for you!” the Reverend spat, resuming his back-and-forth walk but pointing at them. “But your brother in the city ain't up there with you! He's still stuck on the ghetto plantation with the overseer at his back, he's still trapped up in the Jim Crow prison! Think about it! While you're laying down with the lion, you ain't tending to no lambs, and Jesus, he loved the little lambs. There wasn't no lions in that shepherd's flock. If the lion's even tolerating you in his presence, maybe you're doing something wrong! Maybe he's just pitying you. You ever think about that? 'Cause ain't it the nature of the lion to eat the lamb? So what're you doing with the blond-haired lion in the first place? Ain't nobody paid the bill for you to lay down with the lion! Fancy black folks always wanting you to hush the struggle story! What part the cross don't you understand?”

“Amen…”

“I say don't stand on the middle ground, stand on the holy ground!”

“Amen!”

“I said not the middle-class ground—the poverty ground!”

“Amen!”

“For there stands the living Christ, Amen! Yes. I'm gonna tell you a secret now, and if there ain't nothing else you remember, remember this: Jesus loves the poor, because they suffer, and them that suffer is the only ones that love Jesus, 'cause it's only when you suffer that you see the truth and Jesus, he's the truth! You understand? It's a perfect circle. So why are you trying so hard to not be poor? Jesus said only in heaven is the lion gonna be laying down with the lamb. And this—
this
ain't heaven.” He laughed a derisive laugh, then turned to them with a single finger held up in the air as if a thought was newly dawning. His brows were risen high. “But maybe some of y'all think heaven
is
here on earth, it just ain't here in Over-the-Rhine. Ooooooh,” he said slow, looking carefully, pointedly from face to face. “Ooooooh, you think heaven is the American Dream.”

“No, Reverend.”

His eyes narrowed. “Now come on, you know what I'm talking about, don't be looking all innocent. The big old American dream: buy cheap, sell high, forget the past 'cause it's dead and gone, chew up your brother till he ain't nothing but crumbs, smile big, dance real fast, fight their wars, and when in doubt, go white.”

“No!”

“You heard me!”

“No!”

The Reverend held his arms wide. “Well, I hear y'all saying the righteous words, but when I look at my brothers and sisters, I got to ask—how many y'all got a credit card burning a hole in your pocket? How many y'all use that credit card till you're so far in debt that every dollar you make you sending off to some white man like you all are his sharecroppers, and he's living up in the big house? How many y'all go to work every day and check your black baggage at the door, saying”—and he stiffed up and spoke with a whittled falsetto—“‘Yes, Mr. Smith, I'm just so ashamed of how most black folks behave. It's truly an embarrassment to the rest of us'…? How many y'all want to leave out the neighborhood and live up in Hyde Park, so you ain't got to see your black brethren suffering in the city, looking so darn much like … YOU?”

Suddenly the Reverend clapped his hands to his mouth and, with his eyes wide, whispered, “Ooooooh. I get it now. I see. Y'all think Jesus was white. Ooooooh, you think Jesus was white? Children, what part the cross don't you understand? If you're in America and you think Jesus was white, then I'm here to tell you today, you don't understand the cross and you don't understand the color. If they string you up, if they hang you from a big old tree, if they ASSASSINATE you in the name of your brothers, then: You. Are. Black. Abraham Lincoln? Cracker most his days, black in the end. Young Brother Emmett? Black. All them dead Jewboys scattered through the Southland? Even them, black. Reverend King? Black. Malcolm? Black. JFK? Black. His brother in the kingdom? Black. The great-great-grandfather of my dearly departed wife? That man was black through and through, 'cause even though they all say he hung himself, I'm here to tell you that man was a child of God, and that man was assassinated. Bounty on his head from the day he was born!”

The Reverend stopped his pacing and faced them squarely.

“Listen, now,” he said, “I know y'all think you're free, but your aspirations are gonna tell if you're free or not. If the mind ain't free, the man ain't free. And if
my
mind ain't free, then
your
mind ain't free, 'cause we was born just days apart.
Days
apart. How many thousand years man been on this bloody earth? Slavery was just last week!

“So don't be living the lie, chasing the dream, thinking some dead Negro done paid your bill. You ain't earned the right to forget! You ain't earned the right to live in the greenest pasture! You ain't earned the right to lay down with the lion when the kingdom ain't even come! Y'all act like Jesus is dead! Well, let me ask you this: Is Jesus dead in the ground? 'Cause I heard a rumor Jesus done rose up from the grave!”

A woman cried out, “He rose!”

“And how come he rose up out of that dark and nasty grave?”

“Tell me!”

“How come he said, ‘Eat my body and remember me'?”

“Tell me!”

“And how come Jesus is so angry up there in heaven?”

“Tell me!”

“Because my Jesus, my Jesus is the original Negro, and he said, only I can pay the bill, but he ain't paid no bill for no Easy Street, he ain't paid no bill for no credit cards and mortgages up in Hyde Park, he ain't paid no bill so you can forget you was made in the image of God and THE SON OF GOD IS A NEGRO.”

Now the Reverend stopped suddenly, plucked a pink handkerchief out of his suit pocket, and mopped his streaming face, and when he spoke again, his voice was conversational: “Now eventually somebody's gonna tell you Jesus ain't had no brown skin. And you know what you're gonna say when they tell you that? You're gonna say: If Jesus wasn't born no Negro, he died a Negro. What part the cross don't you understand!”

A woman in the corner began to stomp her feet, laughing with her arms raised. “Yes!” she said, and “Yes!” the Reverend said right back, leaning forward at the waist.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said in a voice ratcheted high in exasperation, “train your hearts on Jesus!” Now the whole corner was risen up and dancing and the sprigs on hats shook and there was sweat streaming from armpits and the metal folding chairs were being scraped about on the concrete floor. Tears began to flow. The scrawny youth had resumed his position at the keyboard without anyone noticing, the music once again rolling out in brightly augmenting chords, rising and swelling through the Reverend's words as he said: “Let us close with the truth.”

“Speak the truth!” they called.

“You ready for the truth?”

“Yes!”

“The black body is a temple!”

“Amen!”

“The white man's been trying to tear down that temple forever!”

“Yes!”

“God said speak the truth, but America's asleep, so we got to yell!”